Gillian Russell

Eighteenth century literature and culture of Britain and Ireland

Theatre history

Printed ephemera

History of the book

Sociability

War studies

Gender and Public Culture

Biography

Gillian Russell has a BA Hons degree from the Queen's University of Belfast and a PhD from the University of Cambridge.  She held positions at the Australian National University Canberra and the University of Melbourne before moving to York in 2018.

Gillian's publications include The Theatres of War: Performance, Politics and Society, 1793-1815 (Oxford, 1995); Romantic Sociability: Literary and Social Networks 1770-1840 (co.ed. with Clara Tuite) (Cambridge, 2002); Women, Sociability and Theatre in Georgian London (Cambridge, 2007); and Tracing War in British Enlightenment and Romantic Culture (co.ed. with Neil Ramsey) (Palgrave, 2015).  She has published numerous articles on topics such as women gamblers of the 1790s, servants in the theatre, and actresses and adultery in journals such as Eighteenth-Century Studies, Women's Writing, and Studies in Romanticism.  She has also contributed to a number of Companions on British literature and theatre of the eighteenth century and Romantic period. A monograph on the history of printed ephemera, entitled The Ephemeral Eighteenth Century, is forthcoming from Cambridge University Press.

Research Interests

Gillian's current research interests include a project on Charles Lamb and sociability, a study of extra-illustrated theatre biographies and and a project on political ephemera in the eighteenth century.

Supervision

Gillian finds supervision particularly rewarding and would be interested in hearing from potential graduate students.  Topics that she has supervised (in Australia) include:

Eighteenth-century political songs

The Romantic period military memoir

The representation of China in British Victorian children's literature

The Ladies of Llangollen

The Amherst Embassy to China 1816